A 1913 document ordering the detention of a young girl in a Co Cork industrial school has been put up for sale on eBay.
It details how Fr Gus Ahern of the “North Cathedral, Cork” sought the detention of Mary Bridget McSwiney (sic) at Clonakilty industrial school, at a court hearing in Blarney.
The order was granted as she was “a child under the age of 14 years” who had “been found wandering and having a parent who does not exercise proper guardianship”.
Described as “Roman Catholic”, the child was to be detained until 1919 at Clonakilty industrial school, “it being a school conducted in accordance with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church”.
It was further ordered that her father, Eugene McSwiney, pay six pence a week to the inspector of reformatory and industrial schools in Ireland for the period of Mary Bridget’s detention.
The document has been put on auction with opening bids beginning at $29. It was placed there by Irish Celt, a Co Clare-based company which has been selling items of Irish memorabilia on eBay since 1998. As stated on its website, “our mission is to awaken memories from another era”. The company is run by Davoc and Anne Rynne of Knockliscrane, Miltown Malbay.
Last night, Mr Rynne said he had sold a similar detention document recently to a Kildare customer, who was “well happy” with it.
The documents had been brought to him by a furniture dealer who had discovered them in what appeared to be “a secret compartment” in a sideboard he had bought. There were two folders of documents in the compartment, only some of which the furniture dealer had sold on.
Paddy Doyle, author of The God Squad and whose own order of detention to Cappoquin was made in 1955 when he was four, found the eBay document “very sad” and “extremely poignant”. He was “disgusted and shocked, to say the least” at seeing it for sale on eBay.
But Mr Rynne described the documents as “a poignant piece of history”.
He recalled how Adams auctioneers had to withdraw Famine letters from sale recently due to public reaction. “I can understand that but we live in a capitalist society, so what can we do? I had to buy it.”
He added, however, he had been “thinking of taking it down” off eBay, where it was placed last Sunday, as “I wouldn’t like to be upsetting people”.